Dartmouth to stop offering credit for AP scores

Dishing out mountains of cash for AP exams may soon become a thing of the past.

Beginning in fall of 2014, Dartmouth will no longer exchange AP scores for credit in any subject. The policy change, which will affect Dartmouth’s class of 2018 first, came after the school’s Psychology Department conducted an experiment on an incoming group of former AP Psychology students who received a 5 on the AP exam, which would have allowed them to place out of “Psychology 1.” The results of the test, though, demonstrated otherwise: 90 percent of students failed the exam.

“For a better part of a decade members of the Committee on Instruction have been recommending that Dartmouth discontinue its practice of offering course credit for pre-matriculation credit offered by examination,” said Meredith Braz, registrar of Dartmouth College, in an email. She added that AP scores will still be used to evaluate proficiency for class placement and exemptions from introductory-level classes.

According to Yale College Dean Mary Miller, Dartmouth’s new AP score policy is essentially the same as Yale’s, which does not accept AP scores for credit but instead uses the results for placement as determined by each department.